MARY GEARIN: On the land belonging to the Suffolk Wildlife Trust, in Colchester near the east coast of central England, it's hard for a non-expert to spot which of the naturally bare ash trees has the deadly disease called "ash dieback".

The Trust's CEO, Julian Roughton, can point out the symptoms.

JULIAN ROUGHTON: You've got the stem at the top essentially died, and that will actually travel down through what is currently healthy stem and effectively kill off the tree.

MARY GEARIN: He knows the environmental disaster the nation faces.

JULIAN ROUGHTON: In this part of the world, it's a key component of our ancient woodlands.

There has never been anything like this that has affected ash trees on this sort of scale.

So it is a major impact.

MARY GEARIN: Since Britain's latest battle of the ashes has come to light, the government's been under pressure to act.

It was warned as early as 2009 that the European fungal disease, ash dieback, was on its way, threatening Britain's 80 million ash trees.

As a measure of the impending environmental disaster, the government has convened the same crisis response group that met in the wake of September 11 and the outbreak of bird flu.

And the environment secretary, Owen Patterson, says the government now has a plan.

While young infected nursery stock will be destroyed, mature trees will be left alone and nature will be trusted to heal itself.

OWEN PATTERSON: The immediate plan is do not rush and do anything dramatic with mature trees.

Leave them standing - this disease will take some time to take a hold. During that time, we're going to watch really carefully for those trees which survive, because there is a genetic strain out there, which we've seen in Denmark, which we don't yet understand, which enables some trees to resist this fungus.

MARY GEARIN: It's a concession that the disease can't be stopped.

Julian Roughton's welcomed the government's stance.

JULIAN ROUGHTON: Well actually, we're reassured that government are taking action based on science. And that was our concern, that in an enthusiasm to be seen to be doing something they might take the wrong decision and decide that they were going to slash and burn woods to stop this disease.

And I think that we must be led by science and I think that's telling us this disease is widespread, much more widespread than we had thought.

It does seem that it's windborne, and therefore I think that the plan by Government to put more effort into surveying where the disease is. And also actually looking at the ancient woodlands and the woods where the disease is, and looking at natural resistance within ash, that must be the future answer for the disease.

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